To Remind Chris and the Diva

It's been a while, but here are the things I wrote down that I must remind you:

Read Lamb by Christopher Moore

Next time that you're in Paris, go to Shakespeare & Co, the book store.

Drawing

A very sad article in the New York Times about the ubiquity of amateur drawing in times past. You might need to register to read it.

France Photos

So I've been experimenting with my photos in Photoshop. I know that it's slightly cheesy, but I love me some filtered goodness. I also have a program called Thumbs Plus, which I can't recommend highly enough. It's the first program I ever used to organize and rename photos.

I've used Picasa also, and it's okay, but Thumbs Plus uses your current directory structure and I find it easier to locate and add things. It's not free, but totally worth the price.

Here's some of my experiments:

This porch in Arles really got our attention. Though it was so hot that I thought my eyes were going to boil out of my head.
I increased the saturation by at least 50, then used median to blur and then the watercolor filter.









This scene from the cliff at Les Baux captured the countryside perfectly. I used the same filters/effects here. I find that using the watercolor filter by itself makes for a much duller picture.








This is the cloister from the insane asylum in St. Remy where van Gogh lived for a while.
I used Thumbs Plus for this one. It's got a filter called Drawing, and it looks similar to the Photoshop filter called Photocopy.

New, New Me

Okay, so you can edit the date if you press the little button. No, I'm not simple. Just a bit focused on my annoyances.

I like this other photo better.

Matisse

I love Matisse. He's great with line, great with color, and he kept on creating until he died. So did Georgia O'Keeffe, but then she went blind.

Matisse's grave is in Nice, near the Matisse Museum. We went to the museum, and then tried to follow the signs to his grave but almost didn't find the actual stone. You have to go through the crypts, past the other crypts on the same level, and then go down the stairs. It's a beautiful spot, almost as peaceful as Monet's garden.

Anyway, photos.







Matisse's grave

















Monet's garden

New Me

Trying to add a photo to my profile. Did you know that you can't edit the date on your posts anymore? Not happy about that.

Customs

On a quest for blogs of drawings, for some reason I ended up at Escape Blog, a travel blog which has this hilarious entry dealing with the attitudes a newly married woman should have for sex.

It also has descriptions of all kinds of traditions in other cultures. I'm going to go read some more.

More Shots of France

I went to France two years ago, and spent a few days in Paris. That trip was go-go-go, and I thought this one might be a little more relaxed. It was. A little.

Anyway, my sister and I had a really good time, except for one hotel problem which I'll address later.

We got lost(ish) in the Louvre looking for something that's actually in the Orsay.










This sculpture's actually on one of the outside walls of the Louvre. If you've got Google Earth (which I recommend highly as a fabulous time-eater), then you can see the wall and the Pyramid from above.






This photo's from a market in a small town in Provence. LOVED the markets! I wish that I knew how to set one up in my town. It's just bougie enough to love and support one.







Take a close look at the photo, and you can see the test tubes they were using to package the spices. I didn't buy any of those, but I did get some wonderful roasted almonds and some strawberries.


In two years or so, we'll be going back to Europe. I don't know where yet, because my niece gets to choose, and she doesn't know what she wants to see mostly because she doesn't know what's out there. Probably Spain or Italy.

Where's the best place you ever took a vacation? Got any photos to share?

Back from France

My sister Jenny and I have been back from France for a week. It's been a short week.

We had some great times, some not so great times, and I took more than 400 photos. That's nothing compared to someone I know who took more than 700 photos, but hopefully I'll get copies of those. I finally finished numbering and renaming all the photos. That's slightly tedious, but I'll bet not as much as loading all of them onto the internet.

Here's a small sample of what we did/saw:

The Arc de Triomphe





















Notre Dame de Paris

















The Eiffel Tower




















More to come later.